From the San Diego Tribune: “I found my first gray hair when I was 16. (Cool!) By the time I was in my mid-30s, I was coloring my hair dark brown every six to eight weeks. (Not cool.
By my mid-50s, it was every three weeks: Every third week at home; every third week at the salon. (I. Am. So. Over. This.)
I had become a slave to my silver roots, having spent thousands of hard-earned dollars and countless hours on the weekends trying to hide the fact that I was getting older.
But who was I kidding? Did people look at my dark hair and think, “Oh, she must be young?” Of course not.
Yet, the pressure to color it was very real — I wasn’t immune to society’s anti-aging bias baggage. And even my stylist discouraged me against going gray, saying that that if I ever lost my job, I’d be a middle-aged woman with silver hair walking into the interview room. (Hey, I work for a newspaper; it’s a reality.)
But then, last April, a series of events hit me like a “Snap out of it!” slap from Cher in “Moonstruck” — all of her glorious pewter curls included.
I decided to quit coloring cold turkey and embraced the external transformation I’d been fending off for decades. Little did I know how much going gray would also change how I felt about myself from the inside: The silver lining in dropping the dye was feeling younger than I had in years.
Rocking my roots felt risky, adventurous and empowering. My graybré, where the gray ombrés into the dark, was technically called my demarcation line. It was also my line in the sand: “Yeah, I’m old, deal with it.”
I also had no idea how many women shared my experience until I read “Silver Hair: A Handbook,” by stylist Lorraine Massey and co-author Michele Bender. (2018, $16.95, Workman Publishing)
Massey, who also co-wrote “Curly Girl: The Handbook” with Bender, will make an appearance in San Diego Monday, at 6 p.m. at the Kearny Mesa salon Me, My Curls And I.
Here’s what I learned from my act of counterintuitive defiance and from reading “Silver Hair: A Handbook.”
- More than 75 percent of women color their hair. Trying to calculate the collective cost and all the hours spent in the chair makes my silver scalp explode.
- Massey attributes the increasing popularity of young women dying their hair silver to pop culture, namely “Frozen’s” Elsa and “Game of Thrones’ ” Daenerys Targaryen. There are worse people to emulate.
- Look up #grannyhair on social media and you won’t find pictures of actual grannies; they’re of young women experimenting with all shades of gray. More than 50, even.
- Like me, most of the older women interviewed in the book say the biggest surprise about going gray is how emotionally liberating it is. Not doing the expected thing, taking the safe route or conforming “like an adult,” evokes a freedom that comes with not being an adult. Trust me, few things make you feel that way at 58.
- “It’s so much easier to feel and look younger when you are liberated and being your best, truest self, free of societal pressures and contrived beauty standards,” Massey said in a recent email. “This is what makes us ageless.”
- Talk about liberating, no more dye jobs = more money and — woo hoo! — free weekends. If that doesn’t make you feel more like a kid, nothing will.
- Silver foxes hear from a lot of women that what they’re doing is “brave” and that they wish they could do it too, or they can’t wait until they can do it. (Do it! Like Massey says, if you don’t like it, you’re just one box of color away from going back.)
- Massey tells women that when it comes to hair, focus on what really matters — a great cut. My new stylist Alma is not only my biggest going-gray cheerleader, she has also given me the best haircut I’ve ever had. Very Miranda Priestly. That is all.
- Cutting your way to gray — gradually chopping off more and more of the over-processed, faded, repeatedly-dyed tresses — puts the visual emphasis on your new, shiny locks.
- Everybody in the pool! Some of us (me) rediscover the beauty of swimming. No more need to fear chlorine, that arch-enemy of expensive dye jobs. Come on in, the water’s fine. And so is your hair.
- A lot of older women told Massey that their gray hair has made them less invisible, with more people complimenting them and flirting with them. It could be the hair or it could be the new-found confidence these women have. Now that would be cool.